We promoted our best technician into our Head of Operations seat because of his technical expertise, but our department is falling apart because he cannot manage people or lead projects. How do we evaluate whether he actually has GWC for leadership versus being in the wrong seat?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Promoting your best individual contributor into leadership is a classic trap. Technical brilliance and managerial capability require entirely different skill sets. When you put an elite technician into an operations leadership seat, you often lose your best producer and gain an ineffective manager.

To evaluate this cleanly, use GWC™:

Gets It means they inherently understand what the seat entails. A leader who gets the Head of Operations seat understands systems thinking, cross-departmental handoffs, and organizational flow. If this person still views their job as solving technical tickets or doing the work themselves instead of building systems for others, they do not get it.

Wants It means they have a genuine desire to do the specific job defined on the Accountability Chart. Ask yourself honestly: Does this person wake up excited to conduct quarterly reviews, resolve interpersonal conflicts, and hold others accountable? Or do they simply want the title, compensation, and prestige while wishing they could just tinker with technical problems all day?

Capacity means they have the intellectual, emotional, and physical capability to lead, manage, and hold people accountable (LMA). Technical competence does not equal managerial capacity.

If they fail any part of GWC for the leadership seat, you have a Right Person, Wrong Seat issue. You must take action quickly. Keeping an ineffective manager in place demoralizes frontline staff and causes top talent to leave.

Sit down with them, show them the five core roles of the seat, and be honest about the gap. Often, these individuals are secretly miserable in management and relieved to step back into a senior technical or architect seat where their genius can thrive.